He’s outlived Crocodile Hunter Steve Irwin and Bush Tucker Man Malcolm Douglas - and now the shire’s own wildlife man, David Ireland, has put some of his own adventures into book form.
The wildlife expert and film maker from Cronulla had his first near-death experience when he was a young boy canoeing in a Hawkesbury River catchment at Cowan Creek.
His encounter was with a massive bull ray with ‘‘enormous barbs’’.
Using a makeshift harpoon he struck out at the bull ray which lashed out with its barbed tail, smashing into the boat’s hull and narrowly missing the youngster’s foot.
‘‘Had the barbs driven into me, the combination of blood loss, shock and venom could’ve killed me in minutes,’’ Ireland recalled.
The ray dived into deeper water, snapping off the bow of the canoe and filling the water with its blood.
An old oyster farmer in a dinghy rescued the boy.
Since then, Ireland, now 69-years-old, has had his back broken by a whale, a wild boar has shattered his ribs and he has hand-fed a bull shark.
He has also filmed inside a saltwater crocodile’s jaws, and felt a lion breathing on him as it ate a wildebeest.
Today Ireland is still going strong and, after being urged by many who have heard his story in public talks, he is telling his life story in book form.
The author of the 2011 work Unholy Pilgrims and a year later Rescue at 2100 Hours, both published by Penguin, Tom Trumble became Ireland’s ‘‘ghost writer.’’
‘‘It took a year to write the book, Tom Trumble lives in Melbourne, and I gave him heaps of facts, and he flew back and forth to Sydney,’’ Ireland said.
The revelations in his book The Wildlife Man would probably surprise many people, he said.
At 14 Ireland’s father had just died a few days previously when he returned to an expensive private Sydney school where the headmaster called him out in front of the whole school.
The headmaster belted the teenager on his rear so severely that he bled through his shorts.
‘‘Another boy had carved out my name on the new chapel wall and I got blamed for it.’’
Ireland learned to overcome fear - describing a television shoot at Jibbon bombara near Cronulla.
‘‘The cameraman got so scared of a grey nurse shark he couldn’t hold the camera so I took the camera from him and filmed while I talked to the camera,’’ Ireland said.
He would one day like to turn the book into a film.
The Wildlife Man, by David Ireland, published by Penguin, is available at leading book stores at $34.99.